The Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) was established with the best of intentions – invigorate the local cinema industry by providing a venue for film makers, writers, and producers to showcase exemplary work that captures the spirit of Philippine culture, the interest and fancy of the local audience, and to push the envelope of Philippine cinema. But over the decades, it has lost sight of this mandate and objective and has become a parody of formulaic and uninspired output.

The trend towards independently-produced and curated films over the past few years have birthed some of the most exciting (and, once in a while, dismal) film festivals in the country. With a carte blanche of inspiration as its impetus; writers, producers, directors, and filmmakers have come-up with some of the most memorable films in the last two decades – the Cinemalaya and CinemaOne Originals being two of the most notable stalwarts of the movement.

In the end, the MMFF has lost both its meaning, relevance, and mandate to represent quality local films. Its yearly roster of re-hashed, regurgitated, and humdrum films indicates a lack of insight into the audience’s interest. Banking on its unquestioned monopoly over the cinema houses throughout the holiday season, this absence of healthy competition have left the big-name and big-ticket production houses to annually churn out one of the following blasé themes: a triptych horror series or some form of supernatural terror fest, a tongue-in-cheek rom-com with the most recent and popular love-team as its top-billers, some form of adventure-format or magical sojourn based on a superficial premise, the classic struggle of good versus evil, a farcical slapstick comedy, a semi-biographical action flick, or some gritty drama with the un-evolving theme of third-world struggles.

It’s no wonder and surprise then that discerning moviegoers respond more to indie-films and film fests than they do to the MMFF. Primarily because patronizing the sort of films they have released lately borders on insulting the capacity of their audience to accept, digest, and appreciate more complex, uncomfortable, or extreme themes.

It’s a challenge, then, to the MMFF organizers; and indirectly to the producers, to push the boundaries of film-making in the future, and produce content that is truly a zeitgeist of Philippine culture, a tranche de vie of the sentiments of a more and more discerning, vocal, and discriminating public.

The premise of every artform and medium is insight, perspective. Without this, it is nothing more than glorified nonsense.

Cinéma vérité (/ˈsɪnɨmə vɛrɨˈteɪ/; French: [sinema veʁite], truthful cinema) is a style of documentary filmmaking, invented by Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about Kino-Pravda and influenced by Robert Flaherty’s films. It combines improvisation with the use of the camera to unveil truth or highlight subjects hidden behind crude reality.

To write seems futile, incomplete, unintelligible
thoughts that refuse to find voice, form, a message
scarcely scribbled, quickly discarded, drafted
in the silence of an ordeal 

unspoken.

There is comfort in indecision.

 Realizing, I am human after all.

Words fail, when the heart sprints incessantly

Falling upon deaf ears, for that question unanswered

Maybe in a forlorn reality thrown into the chasm of life

I hold a morsel, remaining untouched, unconsumed.

But for now I am a footnote, those disparate minutiae

Informative, but utterly irrelevant, meaningless in this moment

Yet in this barren conduit, find comfort in the faceless crowd

You might find me, here, where I have always been

all this time.

Just remember, once you're over the hill 

you begin to pick up speed.

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Charles Schulz

People generally dread turning 30, like an affliction that creeps in in the dead of night, turning youth into vain memory, a faint spark of glory days when life meant frolicking in wanton abandon, unbridled by mature conceptions such as responsibility and making a living. Considered a social fulcrum, men of this age and beyond are expected to forego juvenile dreams, and fickle behaviour, opting for the supposedly adult values of sound-mindedness, being goal-oriented, and a sense of obligation.

How easy it would be fall into this stereotype, conceding to the call of age, of time, and of the present. To pledge allegiance to social expectations, because the alternative, uncertainty, is a disposition that men fear with the same progression as they do with age. That the closer you are to your deathbed, the more you fear its eventuality, thus consequently turning the most free-spirited of us into jaded, indifferent, flawed pragmatists and cynics. That to become an adult, or mature, means to fall in line, to follow the flock, and to brand oneself with the searing humility of normalcy.

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A deadline met. Bills paid in advance. Lunch-out with colleagues. A successful introductory meeting with clients. A logbook finally signed. Spending time with le partenaire de mes rêves.  New friendships. An unexpected gift. Renewed ties. An honored introduction. Post-Christmas festive mood. Makati City after work hours. The unplanned stroll at the beloved park. Cold milk tea on a warm December night.  

It has been (and continues to be) such a wonderful year. Here's to an even more wonderful one ahead. 

Bonne Année, et à votre santé!

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The PRC (Professional Regulation Commission) has finally released their board examination schedules for the 2013 term. Now, the eventuality and immediacy of the licensure exam is more palpable and real. From here on, it becomes an inimitable countdown to a necessary deadline. The date is January 25 and 27 (Friday and Sunday) 2013.

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If the recent weather conditions could be summarily taken as a portent, the upcoming start of my reviews this week would be nothing less than challenging. I wish I could brush off this foreboding sense of dismay and curdling anxiety, but the fact remains that the review center I opted to enrol in is located at an area renowned for incessant flooding and the persistent presence of criminal activity. Despite the fact that it is in close proximity to one of the most prestigious universities in the country; which I surmise is also a factor why pickpockets, hold-uppers and various sorts of malevolent intent plague the locale, it is also quite remote from where I hold office.

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"Kinetic Rain" Changi Airport Singapore from ART+COM on Vimeo.

“The chaos brought on by political turmoil, mobility, the population explosion, and by the tremendous impact of the machine, demands that man – if he is to retain his sanity – must have a serene environment. But with serenity we must have delight – the delight of interesting silhouettes of water, the play of variety of outdoor and indoor experience. But serenity, the physical manifestation of the belief that man can live in quiet dignity, must unify the whole.”
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Minoru Yamasaki on providing sanctuaries in response to today's feverish pace and framing man happily in his environment

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Are you knowledgeable in the clothing arts? Does your sense of style transcend your pecuniary means? Do you command a comprehension of fashion with a competency beyond those of your peers and relations? Are you self-aware of trends, and satisfactorily sound when choosing your looks?

Do you love to write? Do you have the journalistic credibility and reportorial hunger to tell a story with both restraint and abandon? Do you seek the limelight that only being published can afford? Do you find writing both as an expression of life, and a creative description of the aspirational qualities of it?

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Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

To all jaded and disillusioned, to the downtrodden and heartbroken, to the fallen and beaten.

To those whose pain has been used to exact the elixir of another’s craft, stolen and stillborn amidst a pigeonholed public mesmerized by the litany of the perpetrators. To those who have given so much, only to realize that they still fall short in the end. To the perplexed and perturbed, purgatorial spirits who seek meaning in the wasteland of our reality, the collapsing consciousness of a life meant to be lived but remaining unrealized.

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"You are my homecoming. When I'm with you and we're well together, there is nothing more that I want. You make me like who I am, who I become when you're with me, Oliver. If there's any truth in the world, it lies when I'm with you..."
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Elio, as spoken to Oliver

Call Me by Your Name, by André Aciman
2007 Picador ® Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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The landscape of geige, sprawling and derelict, of pock-marked outlines lineated with age, bunkers and warehouses, hangars and Quonset huts, parade abandoned and forgotten in the passing of time. Like burlap and kraft upon emptying its contents, they sway vacuous in the silence that lulls the deep evening. I see their silhouettes crisp against the glow of lady la luna, veiled in the dank mists descendant from Siberia. They are my brethren, once titans that dotted the landscape of industry, of progress, of movement, now laid to waste by their inescapable oblivion. Barren, motionless, and timid against a time that refuses to look back, contemplative on their forsaken state, of various degrees of disarray, disrepair, squalor and destitute dereliction.

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The effectiveness of a marketing campaign is not evidenced by how in-your-face and conspicuous it is, but by its ability to elicit an emotional response from its intended audience. Memory and longevity is always rooted on emotional response, and employing an approach that affords this cross-pollination between audience and the intent of the message makes for a more successful advertising strategy.

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Forgive my marked lack of eloquence  in this circumstance. I find myself at a figurative standstill as I look back, being pleasantly overwhelmed, at the year that was, and that came to an unsurreptitious close. I may have been flagrant in the calumny of all things crass and kitschy, often too indignant and swift to contest, and for that reason, must have been the unintended cause for my inacuity on exploring something as ubiquitous and pedestrian as an annual conclusion. For to even attempt to condense, distill, nomenclate, classify, and order a whole year into an entry is just as, in my opinion, foolhardy and delusional as me foregoing caffeine. So I shan't.

To be more precise, there is a n enuresian thirst to illustrate the plethora of vertiginous emotional somersaulting I encountered in the  year that was, ungraspable by the grit and savoy of prose. Now, to find a place to begin is just as daunting as finding the appropriate flourish by which to conclude. Since my writing methodology lacks neither order, pattern, rhythm, regularity, discipline, nor sometimes sense, thus method being inaccurate as a descriptor at all, to examine with unceremonious procession across my entries would be a disservice and blunt oversight on momentous moments that have occurred, and were left undocumented, whether of my own volition or circumstantial dispositions.

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At first, it came as a surprise, why a cafe brand would send me a promotional complimentary drink, considering I rarely patronize their beverages, and seldom even hang-out at their branches. I am partial to the green-and-white brand, whose logo is so ubiquitously gay – the mermaid.

But, as I am a cheapskate and a sucker for all sorts of swag and freebies, I decided to heed the invitation to peruse their website, where the promise of a free beverage had my mouth salivating in anticipation. Of course, all manners of promotional campaigns come with a fine print, and I was waiting for the catch all along.

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There is accretion in this place,
a delicate arrhythmia pervading
of cracked voices, soaked in malaise
and vomit spilled, coagulating.

Like paranoia and panic it crept
metastatic, hempen and contagious
be the youthful forcibly wept
so virulent, potent and hideous.

It felt wounded, a gash, open
fiddled heavily by a muddy digit
perusing flesh beneath the skin,
to rape the limping spirit.

I am here, amidst this anarchy
of bodies mindless, and hollow
moving shadows in captivity
by their own subversive sorrow.

Struggling for alimentary earth
where seed can grow to life,
where breathe escapes dearth,
where warmth eases the knife.

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In the spirit of fair-mindedness, I am sharing this video for your perusal. Let me state this as a disclaimer that although the video and its contents are portrayed as credited facts, I challenge you; an intelligent, educated, and sound-thinking audience, to validate and verify the information presented herein. I am neither discrediting nor reinforcing this content, merely sharing it for the sake of impartial indignation. The bottomline here is not that the video attempts to expose certain longstanding theories, or that it is obviously unilateral in its target, but that it affects us – to become indignant advocates of truth, to awaken the inquisitive and the questioning, to begin the process that peels away ignorance by incredulity.

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Is it just me or has the independent film industry fallen prey to an emergent malady of mediocrity? This, of course, is an overly generalized observation; there are a few noteworthy examples and some have even garnered accolades from foreign audiences, but let’s face it – the remarkable ones are few and far in between and is no way indicative of the homogeneity of our prevalent cinematic experience. I don’t fancy myself as a professional critic; and compared to Froyo, am no movie buff. I’ve had a few experiences during my undergraduate years as a student critic, and have graced several lectures and workshops on film and film theory enough to display a capacity to formulate an educated opinion.

I may not have the acute wit of a Pauline Kael, nor the practical sagacity of a Robert Ebert, and to speak of the profundity of cinematic semiotics would be hugely detached, but I’m certain that even the most layman and shallow would notice how the phrases “indie film” and “experimental cinema” have been used too loosely and without concern lately that it dilutes and damages the essence of these lexis, and consequently shedding the more legitimate instances of the genre in insipid light.

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His hands were quivering. Saltine droplets forming across the bridge of his forehead, trailing down his pudgy nose, as he contemplates the pristine page before him. A blank canvass waiting to be breathed into life, by his letters forming words, strung into sentences, weaved into paragraphs, and composed into a thought, a feeling, a longing.

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I gasped. The distinctly familiar scent of cum and sweat permeates the room like a bookmark wedged between pages of the space, highlighting the obvious remnants of what has just transpired. The singular lamp illuminating the sala seems to cast its light upon the soiled leather couch that buttresses the windows, as if gesturing to the exact spot where it had happened.

The sight of a half-naked male emerging from the shower came as no surprise. His hair was moist, while his torso glistened from his hurried bath. I paused to survey him. He is a stranger.

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